Arnold Kauri (left) and Josh Metekingi sort out of the fresh offal arriving at the Icepak factory in Gilberd St. Photo/Stuart Munro
The creation of an inland port near Palmerston North has brought a Wanganui business into sharp focus.
Icepak NZ, with its head office at its Gilberd St coolstore facility, was a prime mover bringing the ports of Auckland and Napier together in a joint venture to create the new inland hub.
Icepak has an interest in the development because it's an exporter, and saw the opportunity to utilise spare land around its Longburn coolstore. The $20 million development will bring trucked product to the central hub before it's taken by rail to the waterfront.
Initially starting out with a solitary cool store outside Hamilton, Icepak was handling just 1000 pallets and serving local berry and pipfruit growers. But its growth has accelerated since then and now operates from six sites including Wanganui, Longburn, Feilding, Otaki and two stores near Matamata.
Collectively they provide a total capacity of about 40,000 temperature-controlled pallet spaces. The privately-owned company also provides blast freezing, plate freezing and the logistics services for manufacturers, importers and exporters. General manager Sara Ross said in Wanganui its principal customer is Mars Petcare. "Our operation here is different from the other sites because it's predominantly a pet food operation," Mrs Ross said.
The plant produces dog biscuits but handles offal from meats works around the central districts which is trucked to the plant, quality inspected and then frozen. From there some goes to the Mars factory in Castlecliff for on-processing as pet food and the rest is exported.
Mrs Ross said the raw product is processed to Mars' specification. Some of the product is exported to other Mars plants offshore but the remainder was sold to other customers.
Icepak is one of those local companies which has got on with its job and simply flown under the publicity radar. But its role is an important one, providing services to customers including transport, warehousing, packaging and dispatching. Given some of its work is seasonal the staffing numbers can fluctuate but it can get up to 50 staff including five in the management team in the Wanganui head office.
"Operations manager Michelle Turner and the team run a busy operation," Mrs Ross said. Mrs Ross also mentioned the impact the late Martin Boswell had on the company's progress.
"Martin was our compliance manager here at Icepak, but died unexpectedly although peacefully at home in June," she said.
"He worked closely with the Mars quality team on continuously looking for improved processes and systems to provide a quality end product. He had been with the team for five years and was widely respected."
As a company there are more than 100 employees around the country, but she said that was growing and the development at Longburn would add to that.
Looking further ahead she said the Gilberd St property had space to replicate the existing coolstore building if demand was there but she said projects for the company in its other regions had a higher priority.
"But if the opportunity comes we have the room here. Currently the buildings provides half its space to cool storage and the rest to on-site production."
The offal production involved a number of key stages.
"We drain the product and work strictly to specifications around time and temperature of the product. We also do laboratory tests to ensure products maintains the customers' standards.
"It means taking in bins of offal including the lungs, livers and hearts, separating them into their categories and then plate (or block) freezing them.
"Once the offal arrives at the plant it's frozen within three hours. That prevents any deterioration and extends the shelf life," Mrs Ross said.
"After the offal's frozen we pallet it up and label it before it goes into freezers. Some of it will be used by Mars in Castlecliff and some will go to other New Zealand customers. But about 50 per cent is exported to places like US, Austria, Germany and Australia.
"We're exporting 3000 tonnes of offal a year from our plant and that doesn't include what's taken by the Mars factory in Wanganui," she said.
The Gilberd St plant, like the other Icepak sites, is government-licensed to cover the import, storage and export of a range of food, animal and pet food products and other customers include the country's major dairy, meat, poultry and pet food businesses.
The Wanganui plant, which operates 24/7, can currently store 3500 pallets of frozen product. It can also blast and plate freeze 40-60 metric tonnes of product daily.